


the trembling of time

by throughfire



Series: Buck and Eddie [5]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/throughfire/pseuds/throughfire
Summary: Then it’s just him. A shooting star; a guard dog; a massive fucking idiot meeting a bullet, standing briefly suspended in time and air before sinking to the ground to the soundtrack of Buck’s raw voice in a scream that Eddie never wants to hear again.All that planning, and he just had to go and ruin it for himself.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Series: Buck and Eddie [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1630543
Comments: 60
Kudos: 562





	the trembling of time

** EDDIE **

Life is ironic sometimes.

They’re called out late in the evening, and Eddie hears words like _explosion_ and _evacuation_ and _gun_ and _shot wound_ thrown out in the air around him. Everything else fades away at once.

His usual calm, methodic and level-headed approach to his work is left behind somewhere on the floor of the firehouse, and he spends the entire journey to the scene foolishly trying to do what he knows that he cannot do: prepare a plan for the totally unexpected.

He can’t watch Buck run recklessly into another collapsing building without him again, so he’ll have to be better tuned into his best friend as they work. More important than that, though; he refuses to watch on as Buck is held at gunpoint a second time, so he has to make sure that the reported gun and gunman are as far away from Evan Buckley as possible so that he’s not left on a sideline, shaking out of his skin with worry like he was last time.

In the shadow of irony and love, Eddie forgets about himself – about the impulsive qualities of his own part in that equation. He wasn’t in love when he was overseas, his judgement wasn’t clouded by emotion, and his training was engraved into his spine. It was all he knew. Now he’s got a Buck stubbornly attached to his heart and he forgets. Forgets himself, his training, his surroundings. He steps off the truck and is vaguely aware of a building being licked by flames close by, but ultimately pays more attention to Buck by his side.

He steps after Bobby and is aware that their captain is talking, but zones in entirely on the shape of a man, the viciousness of a gaze and the crack of a shot being fired.

Then it’s just him. A shooting star; a guard dog; a massive fucking idiot meeting a bullet, standing briefly suspended in time and air before sinking to the ground to the soundtrack of Buck’s raw voice in a scream that Eddie _never_ wants to hear again.

All that planning, and he just _had_ to go and ruin it for himself.

Only a few seconds must pass of Eddie lying there on the ground alone, but it’s enough time for a lot of things to happen, for a lot of things to process in Eddie’s mind. He feels like his flesh is being torn open and ripped slowly from his bones, perhaps seared away by fire. There’s a point of pain on his right side, just below his ribs, sharp and encompassing as it spreads and branches out to the rest of him, paralyzing him.

Breathing hurts, so he opts not to. He looks up at the sky instead; uncharacteristically overcast for LA and utterly dour to gaze pleadingly at from his position. He can’t spot Mars from here, even though he has spent every waking hour after Christopher’s bedtime lately pouring himself over websites and library books about space to learn it, because the clouds are in his way, now, mocking him.

He’s learned the order of the planets in the solar system, has drilled facts about black holes and the moons of Saturn into his own scattered brain and made plans to take Chris to the mall to pick up all the supplies they’ll need for his upcoming science project. They’re supposed to do it at their kitchen table, eat too many cookies and laugh about how bad he is at painting, but he hasn’t gotten that far yet. He’s had to push it forward so many times because of the extra shifts he’s taken on, and now he’s just gone and pushed himself in front of a bullet as well.

It strikes him, then, that it might suddenly be too late for space explorations at the kitchen table. Might not be anyone left who knows about the telescope he’s hidden underneath his bed for his son’s birthday, either, because he’s been meaning to tell Buck about it at some point, but he’s pushed that forward as well. He thought he had _time_.

He thought he had time for space projects; time to tell Buck that he’s in love with him. He thought he’d get to watch Christopher grow into a happy kid, a good man, an amazing soul. That he’d get to gravitate towards Buck’s side over late night cups of coffee at the station another thousand or so times, watch movies and fall asleep on couches and wake up to the sight of Buck with his own heart beating affectionately in his chest for years to come. Now it all seems so uncertain, and it hurts too much to think about it, to think about the possibility that he might miss it and that he might be about to let the people he loves the most down.

He blinks tears away from his eyes, glares at the darkened sky and ignores how blurry his vision is even when the tears have leapt out of the corners of his eyes. He remembers reading a scientific paper on alternative pain relief – a focus on color to distract the patient from whatever’s hurting them – so he focuses on the indistinct swirls of gray up in that sky. The faint flickering orange in his peripheral view and the sharper, ominous streaks of black that rise in plumes from the burning building to his left.

Then Buck’s with him, kneeling by his side and stealing Eddie’s attention so easily. The worry on his face is so heart-breaking to see, so painful to gaze up at. Eddie wants it gone. He wants to get up from the ground, dust himself off and just walk away from there, towards the fire as if nothing ever happened, just to dispel that tension from Buck’s posture.

The pain is like a steel grip, though, tethering him to the ground, and the awful lines of horror remain on Buck’s face where he’s leaning in close to Eddie. His lips are moving, though his voice sounds like it’s coming from far away or is whispered to Eddie from under water.

“Breathe,” Buck is urging, pressing a frantic palm to Eddie’s cheek in a movement that is the first not to hurt since he sunk to the bottom of this hell. “Come on, Eddie, please. You’ve got to breathe.”

It hurts. It feels like he’s cutting up his entire ribcage just by inhaling, as though the fire in his side has eaten its way to his lung and left a hole there so that no air ever can be enough to fill him up, but the act is making Buck look marginally less terrified above him, so he keeps doing it. Short and labored, wrecking his entire torso and splitting open rib after rib, shaking his infatuated heart.

“ _Good_ ,” Buck’s saying above him, brushing his cheek. “That’s good. You’ll be okay. Just stay with me.”

Eddie opens his mouth to answer, but a shallow breath sticks in his throat and turns into a cough, sharp and painful. New tears flood his eyes, and once he’s finally blinked them away he has to watch Buck being shoved away by Chimney and Hen. Their sharp elbows and soft hands are kind and well-meaning where they’re already reaching for him, but the gesture still makes a disagreeing noise slip out of his trembling chest and he hates how he can’t make his head turn and track Buck’s retreating form, call him back or make him stay close.

Without him to focus on, reality seems even harsher. The sky hangs low above him, poisoned with smoke and uncertainty. Hen and Chimney are working on him quietly, their expressions twisted with badly concealed fear – the kind one harbors for someone who is in a really bad shape.

Eddie knows those faces, knows what those clenched jaws mean because he has been in their shoes so many times, has forced himself to cling to his training and make his trembling fingers work properly as he’s worked on bodies with familiar faces, with important stories. He knows what Hen and Chimney are going through – knows that they are fighting their hardest to push past the fear of losing a part of the family in order to do their job, to save Eddie’s life.

Eddie allows the lead weights of his eyelids slip closed, allows blackness to take over because the sky wasn’t much of a distraction anyway – only reminded him of what he’s done wrong. His breathing sounds more strained like this, so faulty and fragile where it moves his ribcage, pushes his insides painfully.

There are sirens blasting, a fire hissing, and Hen and Chimney speaking to each other. Beyond that, there’s Buck. His voice sounds less distant, now – not as swallowed by water and the white noise of Eddie’s pain. He sounds angry and frantic and he can’t have gone off very far. Must be standing there somewhere, beyond the darkness of Eddie’s eyelids, hidden in a corner of Eddie’s incapability to move without breaking apart even further.

“ _No_ ,” Buck’s saying. “Fuck no, I’m not leaving him.”

He’s back a moment later. Eddie can feel Buck’s fingers touching his temples, and when he looks up he sees the other man kneeling by the top of his own head, out of Hen and Chimney’s way and with that worried expression still adorning his face.

He’s beautiful, even like this. Upside-down and terrified, hovering with his warmth, his care. Eddie blinks away more wetness from his eyes, more blurriness, and concentrates on the blue hues of Buck’s eyes, the gorgeous display of emotion that is always present there. They are oceans now, threatening of floods. Bringing a distraction.

“Blue,” Eddie breathes out, barely even a sound. “They’re blue.”

Buck frowns down at him, halting the movements of his fingers against Eddie’s temples briefly. He looks so worried, so confused, and Eddie hates how he can’t reach a hand up to touch his face, poke at his bottom lip until it stretches into a smile.

“Pretty,” he pushes out instead, because it’s all he can give Buck right now. He swallows, after. Coughs. His mouth tastes of copper, and he looks away briefly to glare at the sky; annoyed with his clumsy mouth. “ _No_. More poetic. Something ‘bout… heavenly blue. Sunken blue. _Neruda_.”

He thinks that they’ve ripped open his shirt, maybe even cut away some of his jacket. His side still feels like it’s burning and tearing, the pain more and more relentless despite the helping hands that are fighting against it. It’s getting harder to focus, to keep his eyes open. Breathing feels useless.

He coughs again, and he thinks that the blood in his mouth must be a bad sign but he can’t scrape up the medical knowledge from the back of his mind; can’t acknowledge the pain and put words on it because if he does he’ll succumb to it, be dragged down and away from a Buck who’s asked him to stay, to breathe. Eddie can’t fail Buck any more tonight, he’s already caused the other man too much pain as it is.

“Maybe something about ice,” he rasps at the confusion in Buck’s eyes. It’s a struggle to align his thoughts with his mouth, to feel solid and real here, beneath Buck’s worried palms. He feels a bit like he’s made out of the brown remains of used and muddled watercolors; bleeding outside of the lines of a painting. Though surely, it’s all red – him bleeding out on this street. Nothing like the blue above him, never that beautiful. “Glaciers. The… _fuck_. The sharp hues of… untainted beauty and—”

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Buck snaps, then. No question mark there, just anger and desperation. A lack of understanding underscored by the trembling fingers that he’s now pressing under Eddie’s jaw, tilting his face up. “You’re not making any sense, Eddie, you – just shut up. _Please_ , you – you’re scaring me.”

 _Kiss me_ , Eddie thinks. _Kiss me and I promise not to make a sound, I’ll tuck them all into my heart along with you, with the touch of your mouth against mine. I’ll keep you safe, keep you from ever looking at me like this again; like I’m breaking your heart._

What comes out, though, when he finally manages to move his tongue, is, “Think I want to sleep now.”

His name sounds like its cutting Buck’s throat up when it’s spoken into the air, but he’s already drifted too far off to reach for it, to soothe it, to tell it that it’s okay.

He hates the fact that hurting Buck is the very last thing he does.

** BUCK **

Buck’s heart is breaking. Splintering. There are shards all over the floor, and he wants to tell everyone else to be careful when they move around the room; to not cut their feet on the debris. He thinks about gathering it all up and tying it into a bouquet for Eddie’s bedside, because that would be a fitting decoration to top off their chosen profession, and it’s all he has to give away anyway, at any time, broken or not. It’s been Eddie’s to keep all along.

Fear has never felt quite this way before. He’s usually loud. Vocal, asking questions and trying his hardest to find a way to help, to make things better. It wasn’t long ago that he was running himself to the ground trying to keep an eye on Bobby, trying to keep him safe.

This time it’s different. He feels hollow; remains quiet and keeps the worry private, tightly knitted to his own body, to his own trembling bones where it can fester and grow uglier by the second.

He hasn’t said a word since they left the scene, since Eddie’s name scraped its way out of his throat one last, desperate time before Eddie was taken away from there, away from Buck. A part of him wants to beg for answers, for the reassurance that Eddie is fine, alive, breathing and surviving, but he knows for sure that his voice won’t be able to carry a single letter right now, not a proper sound, not anything but a whisper of a heart that j _ust keeps breaking_.

Eddie looks pale in the hospital bed, under fluorescent lighting and attention from all sorts of machines that sound absolutely feral. The sounds are too sharp; Eddie too vulnerable. Every beep echoes like a shot in Buck’s mind and he wants it all to stop. Wants Eddie to come back to him; to see Eddie smile and hear him laugh. Wants to be on the receiving end of those unimpressed, raised eyebrows and exasperated shakes of a beautiful head that Eddie always aims his way before he inevitably goes along with Buck’s dumb ideas anyway.

Hen, Chimney and Maddie are standing in the rubble of Buck’s heart with their thick shoes, hovering on the other side of the bed as though unsure where they belong. Buck can feel their gazes on his own skin; three lead weights digging their concern into his flesh as though _he’s_ the one who’s currently balancing precariously on the line between life and death.

He flexes his fingers in his lap; digs his nails into the palms of his hands because at least that’s _something_. A sensation, a physical pinpoint of discomfort to mark his punctured insides. The weight of their gazes, though, and the additional weight of the silence between them gets too much eventually. He looks away from Eddie’s hauntingly peaceful face, takes a deep breath, and gathers his voice from those broken shards on the floor; the unswept mess of his own desperation.

“Don’t do that. Don’t just _stand_ there all quiet, don’t—” he cuts himself off violently, his throat tight and painful. He has to force air down to his lungs – too little of it, but enough to collect himself with, to fuel his voice once more. “Tell me how in love I am. Tease me about there being hearts in my eyes or tell me I have to be careful so he doesn’t catch me drooling over him like you always do. Please just – just don’t look at me as if you’re scared I’ll never get to tell him that I love him.”

By the time he’s done, Maddie’s mouth is hanging open. There are tears in her eyes, reflecting the awful lighting and mirroring the awful heartbreak in Buck’s chest. Next to her, Chimney’s moving his mouth, though no words are coming out. Buck wants to apologize, take his projected feelings back because this isn’t about him or how he feels. They’re a family, and Eddie is a vital piece of it. The fact that Buck’s been too scared to speak what’s in his heart earlier isn’t anyone’s concern but his own right now.

He doesn’t get a chance to say anything before Bobby’s coming into the room, though, looking worn at the edges.

“I think it’s time we let Eddie have some space,” he’s telling them. “The nurses are being lenient with the visiting hours, but we shouldn’t take advantage of it. Athena brought food over, you should try to eat something, maybe get some rest.”

Maddie and Chimney leave first, their hands tightly intertwined. Hen lingers by Eddie’s side, touching a hand to his shoulder and inhaling a shaky breath of air before she follows them out. Buck doesn’t look at either of their faces as they leave – can’t see the worry upon their faces because acknowledging just how scared they all are for Eddie’s life will just make the situation even more real, even more terrifying.

He remains seated in his uncomfortable chair, close to Eddie’s side and with the taunting machines beeping in his ear, while Bobby moves further into the room, taking up the vacated spot on the other side of the bed.

The air feels less thick, now. Buck finds himself deflating a little, unclenching his hands. He has to force them not to reach for Eddie’s, to steal a palm and press it against his own for reassurance.

“As your captain I should probably tell you never to disobey orders the way you did out there again,” Bobby says. He’s looking at Eddie, even though his words are aimed at Buck. He’s containing his concern better than the rest of them, but it’s still there, lining his eyes. “But as… as _me_ , as someone who cares about you, who’s seen you grow into a better man over the past years, I just want to say that I’m proud of you for staying with him. For not running after the shooter or into the fire. For putting Eddie first.”

It feels a bit like taking a knife to the chest – to his heart, had it still been in there. He doesn’t _want_ pride. He wants Bobby to yell at him, to ask what the hell he was doing out there, why he wasn’t alert enough to catch on to what was happening and why he didn’t protect his heart when it leapt in front of him and took the hit.

“You spent so much time talking me into letting you back on the team last year, Buck. You wanted so desperately to go with us on calls again, kept saying you belonged out in the world where you could help people – that being a firefighter was all you had, all you could define yourself by,” Bobby goes on, lifting his gaze to lock it with Buck’s. The intensity in his eyes is almost too much, too piercing. “And I get it, I do. We’re all in this line of work because we think what we do is important. But it makes me happy knowing that you’ve finally found somewhere else you belong, outside of the firehouse – a place just for you, that heals you, where you feel like you’re just as important.”

The words land heavily on Buck’s skin, and take a moment to sink in. They penetrate defenses, chip away at any last attempt to be stoic about this, and coax tears to his eyes.

His voice is a mere, broken whisper when he says, “I can’t lose him, Bobby.”

“You won’t,” Bobby assures him. “We won’t. The doctor said they managed to stabilize him, that things are looking good.”

“But they don’t know that for sure,” Buck presses, “if he’ll wake up, if his brain will be – ‘cause he was out for so long, he—”

“He’s a fighter,” Bobby cuts in, firm and kind and insistent to battle Buck’s desperation. “He’s strong. And he has a lot to come back to, a lot he’d never want to miss out on.”

He walks around the bed, then, and squeezes a hand around Buck’s shoulder, emitting comfort. Buck nods stiffly; tries to believe the words, to sprinkle them all over the floor so that his heart won’t dry out there, won’t lose hope.

Bobby exhales heavily, squeezes Buck’s shoulder another time before his hand slips away.

“The nurses may be lenient, but they seemed pretty keen on us giving Eddie some peace and quiet,” he says. “We’re setting up camp in the waiting room, we won’t be far away.”

Buck is about to protest, to dig his heels into the floor and cling to the very chair he’s on, because fuck that, he’s not going anywhere. Bobby’s already raising his hands though, letting his palms face Buck in a calming motion.

“Not you, Evan,” he says with a small, private smile. “I told them you’re family, you’re good to stay. Think they might even bring you some blankets if you ask them.”

Buck can’t bring himself to respond to that, to even think of the implication of Bobby’s words or the ease with which he said it. Buck and Eddie; a family. Nothing newsworthy about it, apparently, unless you’re Evan Buckley and had no idea. Had nothing but a dream.

There’s nothing he wants more than to be with Eddie, be a proper family with him and Christopher, but right now that future – if it’s something Eddie and Chris would ever even want in return – is hanging by a thread. To speculate on it now, to start to think of it as a possible reality rather than the dream he’s harbored for years, is too scary, and his heart’s too fragile.

“We’re right outside,” Bobby reminds him, moving towards the door. “Keep us updated, okay?”

Buck nods, and watches Bobby go. A moment later he’s out of the chair, easing himself carefully onto the bottom of the bed where he won’t be in the way of wires and machines. He lies Eddie’s feet in his own lap, tucks the blanket carefully around them, and grabs a gentle hold of Eddie’s ankles over the fabric, holding on.

*

He’s still sat like that an hour later, mind carefully blank, when Eddie wakes up.

He stirs slightly at first; a twitch of a finger, a deep inhale and a vague noise of pain before his eyelids start to flutter. Buck watches on in awe, almost too scared to hope that this is real, that it’s happening, that Eddie is coming back to them. Breathing’s been hard ever since the shot was fired, but now it’s impossible. The anticipation is too grand.

Eddie seems to struggle to open his eyes properly, but he does manage to lock his gaze with Buck’s through thin slits and doesn’t seem disoriented in the slightest, not bothered by his whereabouts at all when he croaks; “Under my bed. There’s a telescope, under my bed. For Christopher’s birthday.”

His voice is weak and wrecked and nothing Buck’s ever heard before, but it’s the best thing he’s ever known, the most comforting thing to ever graze him. He’s so overwhelmed with relief and happiness that he folds himself over Eddie’s feet in his lap and grabs Eddie’s knees in an act of pure elation, with tears flooding his eyes and making everything go a bit blurry.

“ _Hey_ ,” he breathes out, wet and trembling. “Hey, Eddie. You’re okay.”

It’s a confirmation spoken for himself more than for Eddie. He’s saying it out loud, manifesting the truth so that the world can’t take it away from him, take Eddie away from him. “ _Thank god_ you’re okay.”

Eddie blinks slowly, repeats; “Telescope, Buck. For Chris. You have to know, if I don’t—”

Buck catches up, then, with the implication of that quietly frantic and utterly senseless heap of words. Understands the underlying intensity behind the revelation: Buck needs to know, _just in case_.

“ _Shut up_ ,” he says fiercely, averting his watery gaze to his lap and addressing Eddie’s covered feet. “I don’t _want_ to know. _You_ know. You will still know later.”

And suddenly Buck hates this; the dejected look on Eddie’s face, the tight knot of emotion that still presses against his own lungs in his chest. Eddie is awake, alive, _talking_ to Buck after being shot and then operated on for hours, yet he looks like Buck’s words are the most hurtful part of the past twelve hours.

Buck breathes out slowly, inhales deeply. He curls his hands gently around Eddie’s ankles again; rubs thumbs over the blanket and against knots of bones. Says, quietly; “Your feet are always cold, you’ve said.”

Eddie’s treading slowly out of sleep and morphine clouds, into a reality where Buck’s snapping at him about the future; where Buck’s refusing to let him go even a fraction, even hypothetically. It’s taking him a while, must be difficult to connect Buck’s words and make sense out of them, but after another few rounds of slow blinking some clarity finally starts to show in his gaze. His expression smooths out from frustration to curiosity.

“I have said that,” he remembers, “to you. They _are_.”

“They stole your socks.”

Eddie raises an amused eyebrow. “Who did?”

“Probably the nurse,” Buck shrugs, perhaps a bit bitter underneath all the other emotions that have battled in his heart this night. He’s been thinking about undressing Eddie since the first time he saw him.

“They were probably just doing their job,” Eddie tells him. His voice is quiet. Strained under pain and exhaustion, but he still manages to infuse himself in it; his amusement, his fond tone.

Buck frowns anyway, says, “You weren’t—”

 _shot in the foot,_ he can’t say. Too real, too close, too soon. His throat closes around it, around the emotion that the mere thought of saying it creates within him. He swallows thickly, painfully, while blinking tears away and deflecting; “She could’ve let you keep your socks.”

Eddie nudges his toes against the inside of Buck’s wrist and smiles when Buck finally looks up at him. He’s beautiful. Breathtakingly so. He’s pretty and dumb and _here_ , alive, moving under Buck’s touch despite what he’s been through, despite the pain he must be in.

Buck feels like he’s been through another tsunami. Not so much physically, but he feels like an emotional wreck and as though he’d fall in on himself if it weren’t for Eddie’s feet in his lap, for the anchoring touch and the everlasting support that Eddie is to him, whether he means to be or not.

They’re quiet for a while; their silence only disrupted by lapses of noise that doesn’t sound so vicious anymore. Signs of life, now, dotting the quiet. It’s rather comforting to listen to, to be assured by. Buck spends the time simply focusing on Eddie’s face, on the fluttering of Eddie’s lashes and the strained-but-there rise and fall of Eddie’s chest – the slight rasp of his breathing.

He sighs eventually. Locks his gaze with Eddie’s once more, and admits, “I was so fucking scared, Eddie. You were lying there in a – in a fucking _ocean_ of your own blood, and you kept rambling about _colors_ and _glaciers_ and things that made _no fucking sense_ , and I was so scared that you were slipping away from us, that you – and I felt so helpless, Eddie, I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t help you—”

“You did help,” Eddie whispers. He takes a breath, then adds, “Your eyes are blue.”

Buck blinks, lets the words sink in, and then ends up staring at Eddie in disbelief when the pieces connect. “That’s what you were rambling about? My _eyes_? What did they have to do with anything?”

Eddie tries to shift in the bed, to sit up despite shot wound and sutures. He grimaces, hisses out in pain, and reluctantly sinks right back against his pillow, settling under Buck’s hands once more.

“They’re like poetry. Neruda. I was trying to remember one particular sonnet of his,” Eddie explains slowly. “I’ll read it to you sometime, make you understand that you helped. That your eyes are distracting.”

Buck tries to sort those sentences out. He thinks that the words sound muddled and perhaps diffused by drugs, pain and long hours of suffering, yet there seems to be something else there. Something private and promising of hope that he can’t quite read into right now.

He opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. He doesn’t know what to say, how much to hope for and how much to discard as drug-infused nonsense. He doesn’t know if Eddie’s actually aware of what he’s saying at this point, if he’ll remember any of it the next time he wakes up.

Buck shakes his head. Smiles softly. “How do you feel?”

Eddie has given into his exhaustion at this point; his eyes are closed again but he still grins. “Like I just got shot.”

The word is suddenly there, spoken and real, roaming free beyond the tight hold of Buck’s throat. _Shot_. Eddie got shot. And it’s like a catalyst, a push to set all the pent-up emotion within Buck free. Everything’s suddenly so real, so undeniable, and Buck can’t handle it.

“Idiot,” Buck snaps. There’s anger in his voice again, simmering below the relief that still clings with disbelief to the moment. It’s a label thrown at Eddie, not just because of the dumb answer to Buck’s question, but because of the actions that put Eddie in this very bed in the first place.

Eddie looks back at him steadily, his expression gone solemn. “I know.”

“You can’t keep doing this, Eddie,” Buck mutters. “I thought you were done punishing yourself for shit you haven’t even done, that you’d stopped working out your issues through physical violence and pain and _danger_ , it’s—”

“I _am_ , it wasn’t like that this—”

“ _You threw yourself in front of me_ ,” Buck reminds him, voice too high, too shrill. “That bullet was aimed at _me_ and you just – you could have not pulled through, Eddie, did you think about that, about _Christopher_ —”

“That he’d have you,” Eddie says. It’s so quiet, even his vocal cords are weak after everything he’s been through. A weight of emotion pressing down on them, straining them. “That split second of consideration before I jumped in front of you, all I could think was that he’d have you if something happened to me. And after, when it was already done, everything else was just… too painful to think about. Not being there to see him grow up, not being able to hold him in my arms again, not to—”

He cuts himself off. Averts his gaze to the side and bites at the inside of his mouth. His eyes are wet, shining with an emotional pain that complements the state his body is in. He takes a shuddering breath and slowly turns his gaze back to Buck, full of emotion and heartbreaking to meet.

“But it helped knowing that – that he has you,” Eddie murmurs, his voice even rougher now. “Someone with as bright of a look on life, someone who’s just as eager to share his thoughts and feelings with other people as he is – who doesn’t shy away from any of it or bottles it all up. He needs that. You.”

When Buck blinks, tears throw themselves off the ledges of his lash lines, pushed to the limit by emotional distress because the night has been _too much_ , has brought him too many emotions to deal with. Fear, worry and dread, gone to relief and joy, only to land in this utter warmth spreading though his entire body and making the pieces of his heart sing careful melodies of hope on the floor.

He feels a bit awestruck by the fact that this is how Eddie sees him, that this is the kind of relation that Eddie sees between his son and Buck. There’s no denying that he is vital to them, to their family, whether a proper part of it or just a member by association.

“I’d be useless if you left me alone with him for more than a day,” he ponders, scratching fingers against the blanket over Eddie’s legs just to have something to do, to focus on. “I didn’t even know what to do when we got here tonight – if I should call and let him know that you’d been hurt or not, if I should worry him before we knew for certain how you were doing. He might be really angry with me when he finds out that I didn’t let him know right away.”

When he looks up from his own fingers, Eddie’s already smiling softly at him. The other man closes his eyes for a long moment, and it looks like he has to physically force them open again when he finally meets Buck’s gaze anew.

His smile is still soft, still so fucking beautiful, when he whispers, “See, those thoughts are exactly why you’d be brilliant with him. You always have been.”

Buck breathes in slowly, blinks slowly, lets the moment pass by _so slowly_. He gives those words time to truly sink in and ties them back to Bobby’s words from earlier. Connects them to everything he previously thought of himself.

He used to believe that being a firefighter was all he was good for, but he’s starting to realize that it’s not. It’s slowly dawning on him that he has been getting things right with Christopher without even trying, that he’s been doing good just by being himself, by wearing his own clothes and being present in Eddie’s and Christopher’s lives. That the uniform isn’t the part of him that makes him important.

He looks at Eddie, and has to breathe in deeply to steady himself because they’ve opened this wound, now, this well of emotion within him, and he was kneeling over Eddie’s lifeless body hours ago, praying for the chance to say so many things. He won’t back down now, won’t let himself bite the words back and go back to not speaking, not exposing his heart.

“And me?” he asks, and there’s water in his voice too. Everything’s so blue, so fragile. He waits until Eddie bends open heavy eyelids once again, and meets that brown gaze when he asks, “Did you think about me at all? Me without you – what that would be like? You kept rambling about some damn Neruda guy while you were bleeding to death on the fucking street, and all I could think was that there was no room for me to tell you that I love you, that I’d never get the chance to let you know.”

Eddie looks back at him, lets the silence consume them both. His eyes are red-rimmed and his skin is still so pale that it looks like his cheekbones will bruise it. Buck feels like an asshole for doing this to him, for keeping him up, for torturing him with this emotional onslaught of conversation when he should be resting or getting drugs shot into his system to keep the pain at bay, but the future still seems so uncertain. Reality still feels like an enemy, ready to snatch this brief breath of air and relief away from him, and he can’t make it through another second of Eddie not knowing.

“I always think about you,” Eddie whispers. “I love you. I’m sorry I scared you.”

His eyes are slipping shut again; the effort of keeping them open seemingly too big.

Buck, spurred by those words and the certainty behind them, slips Eddie’s feet out of his lap. He smiles at the unhappy noise Eddie makes at the loss of contact, and proceeds to stand up from the bed so that he can move closer to Eddie’s head.

He fits a palm to the side of Eddie’s face, brushes his thumb over a cheekbone, and can almost hear the shards of his heart clink with trembling hope when he says, “I forgive you. Part of being a family, remember?”

It’s a careful offer, a hopeful inquiry. _The three of us as a family, a unit, if you want me_.

Eddie’s response is a small smile, soft and pretty and entirely Buck’s to drink in. Eddie’s eyes remain closed, his breathing somewhat strained but ever so comforting to listen to as time ticks on around them. There’s no promise of not doing it again scratched into the air by Eddie’s strained voice, because they both know that it would be a lie, that neither of them will ever willingly stand by and watch the other one get hurt in the future.

Buck thinks that he started to realize, as soon as he saw Eddie throw all of his weight in front of that bullet last evening, that Eddie’s emotions are as raw and as forcefully tied to Buck as Buck’s are to Eddie – that some parts of themselves are embedded in the other; theirs to protect and keep safe.

“Evan?”

“Hm?” Buck murmurs. “Do you need anything? I should call the nurse, right, tell her to—”

“Kiss me?” Eddie mumbles. “Before I pass out on you again.”

When Buck breathes in this time, it fills him up to the brim. No knot tied around his lungs, cutting off his air supply; just his heart slowly piecing itself together in that empty space in his chest.

He smiles at Eddie, at the peaceful expression that adorns that gorgeous face and the dark lashes that fan out prettily against his skin. His own hand fits so nicely against Eddie’s jawline, feels so right against him.

He leans down and in, and kisses Eddie’s mouth softly. _Finally_.

When he leans back again, he’s pretty sure that Eddie has drifted off, folded under blankets of pain and the remaining dregs of battling morphine. Buck presses another kiss to Eddie’s forehead, and gives himself another minute of this, of quiet and of the assurance that he finally has Eddie back, that he has Eddie in all capacities and that the remaining worry in his heart is accompanied by the confirmation that Eddie loves him back just as much. That he never has to pretend not to be stupidly in love with Eddie again.

“I’ll go tell the nurse that you’ve been awake,” he whispers against Eddie’s temple, stealing one last kiss for now. “Let everyone know that you’re okay – they’ve taken over the waiting room, they’ll be so fucking happy when I tell them.”

“And bring our Chris,” Eddie mumbles, exhaustion slurring his words.

“Of course,” Buck agrees through a hum, grinning like a damn idiot. “I’ll go home and get Chris. And some socks for your feet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this one was drawn from sonnets XXIV, XC and XCIV by Pablo Neruda. 
> 
> I've never been shot, colors as a sort of pain-relief is supposedly a real thing (according to the British panel show QI), and Eddie being an avid (poetry) reader is entirely my own headcanon. I wrote this one for myself more than for anyone else; I get it if it wasn't for everyone and I am sorry if it was confusing for everyone but me.


End file.
